Born in France in 1928, one of the fashion photographers Guy Bourdin, best known for highly experimental photography. Predominantly working in color, Bourdin was a key contributor to French Vogue from 1955 to the end of the 1980s, pushing the boundaries of fashion photography, presenting bold often provocative images with a unique and personal style in which he explored the realms between the absurd and the sublime.
Originally a painter, he was famed for his suggestive narratives and surreal aesthetics, radically breaking conventions of commercial photography with relentless perfectionism. Bourdin was also a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s MacGuffin technique, creating crime scenes through the photographs and getting rid of all the usual norms of beauty and morality.
The Surrealist influence in his work is often attributed to his close relationship with Man Ray, who in 1952, wrote the catalog forward for Bourdin’s first solo exhibition. Bourdin’s career spanned more than 40 years during which he worked for the world’s leading fashion houses and magazines.
